HowPresocralics Understandthe Human Cognitive Powers

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Such myth-tellers as Homer and Hesiod thought of human cognitive powers as inferior to those of gods and represented the structure of the world as utterly unknowable and unintelligible for men. Xenophanes, who also assumed the opposition between the divine and the mortal, never embraced a total scepticism. It is concerning the things in the 'non-evident' realm that he recognized the finiteness of human understanding. Men, who want to explain the matters beyond the direct experience, cannot but conjecture because of their very physical finitude in contrast with the divine which has no individual sense organs. The conjecture they make is nothing more or less than δokoζ (I.e. opinion, not sheer guesswork). But they can make this δokoζ as approximate to the truth as possible with the accumulation of information gained from immediate observation. Xenophanes expresses a faith in human progress with no bounds in scientific research, which we could never find in the views of the myth-tellers.Parmenides took the opinions (δoξα) of mortals as absolutely deceptive. Why does Parmenides expressly teach such opinions in his poem? Does he not leave any room for cosmology? First of all, we have to note that δoξα Cannot be identified with mere appearance or phenomena. It is a clearly formulated judgement or belief, assurance of truth. We must not seek for the source of its unreliability in such an inherent error of sense perception. It is an anachronism to see the opposition between reason and senses here. Parmenides found fault with mortal belief for its lack of understanding of the nature of Being. In the light of the necessary qualities of Being expounded in the Way of Truth, to study and dissolve the deceitful cosmology depicted there leads to the re-establishment of correct cosmology based on the true insight into the nature of Being.